I L L U S T R A T I O N S B Y B I L L R O B L E S
Senior Deputy District Attorney
Ron Zonen for the prosecution
Zonen shot out of the box with a crackling, blistering attack on defense attorney Tom Mesereau’s opening statements — reminding jurors that Mesereau told them in February to judge him on the basis of his opening claims. “Go ahead and do so,” Zonen said, rattling off more than a dozen discrepancies.
Such as… The accuser’s mom shook down Mike Tyson, Adam Sandler and Jim Carey. “Did you see them here?” asked Zonen. The mom had her hand out at The Laugh Factory. “She was never there,” said Zonen. It was the boy’s dad. The mom used the family’s bachelor flat on Soto Street to play on sympathy and tap celebs for money. “Name one!” challenged Zonen.
The message: Don’t trust Mesereau — and don’t trust Mark Geragoswho took $180-thousand dollars in fees from Jackson, said Zonen, but could not recall much, if anything of what his client had told him. So if you can’t trust the defense attorneys, who can you trust from the defense side?
Grooming boys to enter
'the realm of the forbidden'
Zonen said Jackson would separate adolescent boys from their parents and authority, take them out of school, let the kids run free, feed them enormous amounts of candy, let them play the best videogames ever invented. But at night, he said, they would “enter the realm of the forbidden.”
One of the most powerful moments came when Zonen displayed a photo montage of four of Jackson’s accusers, surrounding a photo of the pop star. He described took the edge off Neverland’s sweetness and light rep by describing it as a “veritable fortress” where the boys “learned about sexuality from someone who was more than willing to be their teacher.”
Zonen did his best to salvage the reputation of the accuser’s mother whom the defense has portrayed as the mastermind of a plot against Michael Jackson. Zonen saying she never received or asked for money. He admitted she has probably committed welfare fraud, calling it a mistake, explaining it away as the deed of a mother with three children — living on their own.
He praised the mother as a woman who pulled her kids out of Neverland forever within 36 hours of learning they had been drinking at the ranch. Of Jackson, Zonen said, “Michael Jackson has a drinking problem. There’s no other explanation to it.”
Zonen pursued two themes in his closing argument: Michael Jackson injected himself into the lives of the accuser and his family — not the other way around; And, the accuser’s mother never asked Michael Jackson for money, nor did she get any, though Jackson and his aides cashed in by millions on the Bashir rebuttal show they produced for Fox.
He called the suggestion that this trial is about a shakedown “unmitigated rubbish.” He cited the mom’s telling Frank Casio in a secretly-recorded phone conversation, “Don’t worry Frank. I can’t be bought. I have a table full of offers and I didn’t take a single penny.”
And choice picks from Jackson’s porn collection made a return appearance on the courtroom’s big-screen projection system. “Why does he possess such magazines?” asked Zonen. “Because he has 13-year-old boys in the room.”
Zonen zeroed-in on Jackson’s previous accusers, saying there was no reason not to believe the mother of Jackson’s 1993 accuser and praised the maid’s son who told of ticking-gone bad — describing the now 24-year-old in heroic terms for coming forth with nothing to gain but embarrassment.
He described Jackson’s current accuser as having shown “remarkable courage” in giving testimony that was “entirely credible, entirely accurate and truthful.” In describing how Jackson “took sexual liberties with a 13-year-old boy. Michael Jackson should be held responsible for what he did.”
Thomas Mesereau for
Michael Jackson’s Defense
Tom Mesereau opened his closing argument by countering the personal slams Zonen had made on his opening statements. “When a prosecutor does that, you know he’s in trouble.”
Mesereau spent the first half hour of his close attacking the credibility of the accuser’s mother, calling her a scammer, the mother in a family of con artists, actors and liars who the prosecution “is trying to prop up.”
Trashing the accuser's mom:
a major defense theme
Mesereau attacked the mom’s J.C. Penney lawsuit, and the fact that her police booking photos showed no bruises following her alleged attack by security guards that she said left her battered and beaten. He brought up the article in the El Monte newspaper in which she asked for her bank account to appear in the fund-raising story for those $12,000 cancer treatment injections for her son that actually cost $1,200 and were fully covered by insurance.
“If you have any doubt” about the accuser’s mother, “Mr. Jackson must go home and he must be free,” said Mesereau. “The history is clear, the manipulation is absolute.”
He added that a conviction would allow the accuser’s family to launch a successful civil suit against Jackson. “You cannot allow injustice to happen in this courtroom,” he said. “You have the power in your hands to make them rich, and they’ll never have to work another day in their lives” he warned.
Mesereau told jurors that the biggest red flag in this case is the fact that the accuser’s family went to their lawyers four months before they went to police. He’s tying a financial motive to the allegations of molestation. He called them “con artists, actors, liars.” A family where children have been taught to con, taught to lie.”
He pointed out that three of the prior accusers, Macaulay Culkin, Brett Barnes and Wade Robson testified that nothing had ever happened during their days and nights with Jackson, and that the 1993 accuser refused to testify.
As for the maid’s son, he quoted the boy as saying that “money became important to me” when he turned 16, and that no criminal case was ever filed, though a multi-million dollar settlement was reached with the boy and his mother.
Mesereau calls Jackson's
prosecution 'barbaric'
Mesereau said that Jackson is the victim of a mean-spirited, nasty and barbaric prosecution — a thinly veiled reference to D.A. Tom Sneddon. And he claimed that the D.A. did not indict any of the other alleged co-conspirators simply to keep them out of the courtroom in fear. Why charge Michael Jackson? “He’s a mega-celebrity,” said Mesereau, “and that’s what this case is all about.”
Tom Mesereau attacked the conspiracy charges, fighting the prosecution’s timeline by saying it’s absurd to believe molestation took place with Jackson under a microscope following the worldwide uproar over the Bashir documentary. “You have to believe the accuser and his brother beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Mesereau, “and that is impossible.”
Mesereau tried to generate sympathy for Jackson, saying the price of superstardom is “loneliness, confusion and not knowing who your friends are.”
As for the porn, none of it was illegal, said Mesereau.
He questioned why Michael Jackson would appear on Martin Bashir’s “Living With Michael Jackson” and say that he slept with children if he was indeed committing molestation. “Michael Jackson couldn’t conceive of saying, ‘Aha! There’s a cancer victim. I’m going to ply him with alcohol and molest him.’”
Trashing the accuser, too,
through inconsistent testimony
As for the accuser, “he’s a trained actor and proud of it. These are the same kids who were dancing about their poverty on the stage of The Laugh Factory so people would feel sorry for them.” He called the boy “street smart,” a boy who in 1990 filed a false claim of sexual abuse against his own mother.
He pointed out inconsistencies in the boy’s testimony regarding drinking at Neverland, whether he was scared for his life or wanted to stay on the ranch, and his statement to Bashir that “nothing bad ever happened in Michael Jackson’s bed.
Mesereau’s closing arguments continue in the morning.
michael jackson et amo love you eres el unico en mi vida siemrpe lo seras pase lo q pase,digan ,lo q digan,ocurra lo q ocurra te amo con todas mis fuerzas
Y VOY A CER JUSTICIA LO Q TE ISIERON POR Q TE ACUSARON POR ALGO Q NO COMETISTE OSEA POR ABUSO SEXUAL AY Q SOY ESTUPIDOS pos ojala q estes bien y voy a matar a victor gutierres el iso todo esto
TE AMO
VINKA ANDREA MJ
Y
MICHAEL JACKSON
Posted by: vinak andrea mj | Friday, October 14, 2005 at 02:10 PM